To conclude a yearlong lecture series
titled "Executive Access: Top Engineering Professionals
Share Their Work and Insight," Smith College's Picker Program
in Engineering and Technology will host Alfred Grasso, senior
vice president and chief information officer of MITRE Corporation.
MITRE, a public interest company that partners with the government,
combines systems engineering and information technology to address
issues of critical national importance.

Grasso's lecture, titled "Millionaire
or Just a Survivor? Careers in IT Today," will take place
on Friday, April 20, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Alumnae House
conference room. It is free, open to the public and wheelchair
accessible. Lunch will be served.

In addition to overseeing MITRE's information
technology resources, Grasso guides the company's use of information
technologies in its customer programs. His professional background
includes work in system integration, advanced prototyping, technology
insertion and modeling and simulation. He is the former technical
director for the Battlefield Systems Division at MITRE's Fort
Monmouth, New Jersey, operation, a position in which he was responsible
for directing aspects of the U.S. Army's Force XXI Battlefield
Digitization Program. He also served MITRE as a department head
for the Army Command and Control System and Army Tactical Communications.

Before joining MITRE in 1986, Grasso,
a 1980 graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a master's
degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, worked for ARINC
Research Corporation and Westinghouse Electronic Corporation.
He also served six years in the U.S. Air Force, in which he was
responsible for Air Force ground mobile communications in support
of air base defense and point air defense.

The Executive Access series has hosted
several exemplars of engineering throughout the year, including
Gary Downey, director of the Center for Science and Technology
Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University;
Iwona Turlik, vice president and director of the Motorola Advanced
Technology Center; and Henry Michel, chairman emeritus of Parsons
Brinckerhoff Inc., the contractor for Boston's "Big Dig."

Established in 1999, Smith's engineering
program is the first such program at a women's college and one
of only a handful at liberal arts colleges. The first 20 students
in the program entered this fall.